


Hatcher

by Age or Wizardry (ageorwizardry)



Category: Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher - Bruce Coville, Magic Shop - Bruce Coville
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ageorwizardry/pseuds/Age%20or%20Wizardry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"How old will you grow?" Jeremy and Tiamat come to some realizations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hatcher

**Author's Note:**

  * For [schiarire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/schiarire/gifts).



> This scene ended up not fitting in the main story, so I wrote it up as a separate treat.

_How old will you grow?_ Jeremy asked. Tiamat turned in flight, and Jeremy felt it in her wings as though they were his own. She concentrated on catching the wind and settling herself on the updraft as she considered Jeremy's question.

 _Just how big are you going to get?_ he had asked her once, when she was still a baby, tiny almost beyond memory now. _BIG!_ she had replied, which was an answer of sorts, if not in the terms he'd been looking for—a measurement in feet, for instance, or compared to the size of an elephant or a school bus.

Tiamat answered now with a strange feeling as though a rubber band were being stretched over a far greater distance than Jeremy could imagine. _Old,_ he translated. Even though the answer wasn't given in years or any other measurement Jeremy knew, he suspected that it was longer than any lifetime he'd be likely to live.

He had a picture in his mind of Tiamat's life, stretching out in front of her like a path, long and winding, leading around curves and crags as far as he could see. He saw his own lifetime as a path next to hers, following alongside it, but stopping short while hers continued.

A purple-and-brown blare of distress came from Tiamat. After all, she was still a young dragon, thought Jeremy—a _very_ young dragon, it seemed. She'd only been alive for a few months, not much time to get used to the idea that people you loved would die one day.

Jeremy thought carefully about what he knew about death. When you got a pet, of course, you knew it was going to die before you did. Jeremy suddenly realized that, even though he was the human and Tiamat was a dragon, he would be the pet in this scenario, so that wasn't quite right. Of course, Tiamat wasn't a pet, either; they were friends. They were both people, even if only one of them was human-shaped.

No, the pet comparison didn't quite fit. Even if Tiamat did pick Jeremy out, in a way—but he'd been taking care of her. Remembering feeding Tiamat milk, Jeremy thought of his mom and what it must have been like taking care of him as a baby, a tiny creature who needed to be protected. _Parents_ , he thought, and in a way he had been like a parent to Tiamat. He'd taken care of her from when she was a baby, watched her grow. And of course your parents were older than you, and, even though he didn't think about it a lot, of course they would probably die first.

So he might be sort of like a pet to Tiamat, and sort of like a parent, but neither one really fit. He wasn't sure exactly how much of this train of thought had gotten through to Tiamat; he had a confused time trying to put it into words, much less into pictures. But she must have followed at least part of it. _Pet_ , she thought, sending an image of one of Jeremy's gerbils, then quickly sweeping it away. _Parent_ , she sent next, with an image of Jeremy's father handing him ointment to treat his scratches from Fat Pete, then rejected that as well. Then she sent a third image: looking out over the jagged edge of a broken eggshell, seeing stars and moonlight... and then Jeremy's own face.

 _Hatcher_.

 _I have dragon parents here_ , she said. _But you will always be my Hatcher._

The thought trembled around the edges, as though Tiamat felt like crying again. Jeremy didn't feel like thinking too closely about the whole thing himself, but he looked when Tiamat sent the image of their lives as parallel pathways again.

He couldn't say exactly what was different about it this time, but he could see that the emphasis now fell not on the end of his life, but on the fact that, up to that point, he and Tiamat would travel together.


End file.
